This site is the primary online presence for ACRL-Oregon, which serves a dual role as the Oregon chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) as well as the Academic Library Division of the Oregon Library Association (OLA).

Today is the day that many librarians running reference services dreaded – Meebo discontinuing most of their products (with the exception of the Meebo Bar). Even though Meebo (or parts of it) will still live on in various Google products, that still doesn’t help those libraries who have build services and applications around a product that has been around for a while (Meebo was established in 2005).

If Meebo was any indication, even established, long running technology services can go away without much advanced notice. What is a library to do with incorporating third party applications, then? There is no way to ensure that all the services and applications that you use at your library will still be in existence for any length of time. Change is about the only constant in technology and it is up to us who deal with technology to plan for that change.

How to avoid backing your library into a corner with no escape route in sight

The worst has happened – the application you’re using is no longer being supported. Or, in a more positive light, there’s a new alternative out there that performs better than the application your library is currently using at the moment. The scenarios above have different priorities; migration due to discontinuation of support will probably happen on a faster timeline than upgrading to a better application. Overall, you should be prepared to survive without your current 3rd party applications with minimal amount of content loss and service disruption. For this post I’ll be focusing on third party application support and availability. Disruptions due to natural disasters, like fire, flooding, or, in Grinnell’s case, tornadoes, is equally important, but will not be covered at length in this post.

Competition (or lack there of)

When news broke that Google purchased Meebo, most weren’t sure about what would be next for the chat service. Soon afterwards, Meebo gave a month’s notice about the discontinuation of most of their products. Fortunately, alternative chat services were plentiful. Our library, for example, subscribes to LibraryH3lp, but we were using Meebo Messenger as well as the MeeboMe widget for some course pages to supplement LibraryH3lp’s services. After the announcement, our library quickly switched the messenger with Pidgin, and are working on replacing the Meebo widgets with LibraryH3lp’s widgets.

Having a diverse, healthy pool of different applications to choose from for a particular service is a good place to be when the application you use is no longer supported. Migrations are never fun, but consider the alternative. If you’re using a service or application that does not have readily available alternatives, how will your services be affected when that application is no longer supported?

The last question wasn’t rhetorical. If your answer is looking at a major service disruption, especially to services that are deemed by your library as mission-critical, then you’re putting yourself and the library in a precarious position. The same goes if the alternatives out there require a different technical skill set from your library staff. Applications that require a more advanced technical skill set will require more training and run the heightened risk of staff rejection if the required skill level is set too high.

Data wants to be backed up

Where’s your data right now? Can you export it out of the application? Do you even know if you can export your data or not? If not, then you’re setting yourself up for a preventable emergency. Exporting functionality and backups are especially important for services that are living outside of your direct control, like a hosted service. While most hosted services have backup servers to prevent loss of customer data, you should still have the ability to export your data and store it outside of the application. It’s best practice and gives you the peace of mind that you do not have to recreate years’ worth of work to restore data lost due to vendor error or lack of export functionality.

Another product that is widely used by academic libraries, LibGuides, provides a backup feature where you can export your guides in XML or individual guides in HTML. It will take some work for formatting and posting the data if needed, but the important thing is that you have your data and you can either host it locally in case of emergencies or harvest the content when the time comes to move on to another application.

Some technology service audit questions

Here are some general questions to start you down the path of evaluating where your library currently stands with third party applications you rely on for providing specific library services. Don’t worry if you find yourself not as prepared as you want to be. It’s better to start now than when you learn that another application you use will be shutting down.

What third party applications does your library currently use to provide library services?

Are there other comparable services/applications available?

What training resources are available for alternative applications?

What technical skills do these applications require? Are they compatible with the technical skills found with the majority of library staff?

While there are many potential landmines when using third party applications for library services, these applications overall help expand and provide user services in various ways. Instead of becoming a technological recluse and shunning outside applications, use these applications wisely and make sure that your library has a plan in place.